Wall Street Journal

The office of Civil Defense spent $147 million in 1962 to stock fallout shelters with medical and sanitation kits, water drums and 315 million pounds of food, including graham cracker-like "survival ration biscuits." The agency specified that the food have a shelf life of five years (although the manufacturers said it would last twice as long) .

In some warmer climates, the water drums are starting to leak and the biscuits are turning rancid. This didn't stop the perhaps-unknowing State Department not too long ago from offering a supply of the biscuits to the Pakistani government as part of a disaster relief shipment.

The Pakistanis discovered the biscuits were rancid-- and were delighted. It seems a national habit is dipping rancid yak butter in tea, and the biscuits were a perfect substitute, or so swears a high civil defense official..